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Sunday, 21 August 2011

Clouds of 1's and 0's

Cloud computing is fast becoming the future of information technology. Everywhere you go people are talking about it, even people that would not normally speak about something technological are talking about it. Cloud computing and cloud based services are pretty impressive. This blog is done in the cloud, people have been using the cloud for a long time and may not have known about it even.

My initial thoughts on cloud-based services are less than favourable to using it from an enterprise perspective but from an end-user point of view cloud services are fantastic. My concerns are mainly around security of ones data mind you.

Why trust someone else to look after my data? What happens if the company whose hands you have willingly placed your data into fails? Big companies can crash especially in economic times we are in, think Lehman Brothers in 2008 or scarier Worldcom, the big telecommuncations company back in 2005.

Who is to say that the likes of Amazon, Apple, or Google may go bankrupt. Then what will happen to all that data and the businesses that have been reliant on their services being there and suddenly they are not.

At this stage there is no real security regulation of the cloud based services? We would like to think the corporations will look after our data but big companies are also targets for hacking groups which could led to unexpected down time of your business should you be making full use of cloud services.

The accountant may see benefit in moving things to the cloud but for the IT administrator / security engineer the cloud is a potential landslide of issues. In a country like South Africa where a decent internet connection is rare, why would a small business or for that matter a large business move to cloud based services.

Even if the Internet was better what about the issue of power, can we rely on Eskom to provide sufficient power. Sure UPS devices in businesses work for a shortime but eventually you will lose your Internet connection ergo your business. Not every business can have generators running 24/7.

In my opinion cloud based services are not for South Africa yet, the services will become mainstream in SA as they have elsewhere but only because the accountants think it is cheaper. This is until a Telkom outage or Eskom load-shedding incident occurs showing the folly of the decision.

We will not escape the cloud as it is the future. Microsoft are already designing and launching products aimed at the cloud and with pc's, tablets, and phones increasingly needing the internet it is not surprising.

The cloud is coming, will it be a big, grey and stormy one or a beautiful, soft and fluffy one we will not know. The cloud is there on the horizon looming large, lets wait and see what it brings.